[dogscoff]

So which way wins the effectiviness contest:
1-Build the 15 minor cities and then upgrade.
2-Build one Minor city, upgrade, then go to the next.

Build, upgrade, build, upgrade. The costs are the same, but if you are upgrading as you go you are benefitting from the increased output of the upgraded facilities.

thing is, it takes something like 10 years (100 turns) for most of the city facilites to repay the min/ rad/ org investment of bulding them. Of course there are other benefits that are harder to quantify (shield generation, cargo space, storage, research/ intel output, looking cool) but if you are counting your minerals you probably want to be building nothing but miners anyway. Cities are only for ppl playing the loooooong game.

As a side note, in my single player game I'm about 500 turns in and I have built several megalopoli - some planets have 2 or 3. I also came across an AI world 2 systems away from its homeworld with over 20 major cities and 2000 million ppl on it! This is one well developped AI...

[ February 24, 2003, 16:52: Message edited by: dogscoff ]